It’s been a hell of a weekend, hasn’t it? The tragedy in Connecticut was devastating. It colored everything. What can be said about such a thing? I can’t even conceive of how the parents of the dead children must feel. You send your kid off to school and expect to see them later that afternoon. No one thinks their child will not be coming home. How can a parent begin to wrap their head around this? It makes me feel ill. My heart breaks for them.

I don’t like kids much–they’re noisy, obnoxious, destructive, and germ-ridden–but there are two things that make me nuts really fast: hurting a child or hurting an animal. Do that in my presence and I’ll take you out. Kids and animals are innocent. They shouldn’t have to suffer at the hands of insane adults.

Writing didn’t seem to matter in light of what happened. I couldn’t concentrate, and the few times I sat down at the keyboard, I couldn’t create. The weekend slowly vanished, obliterated by movies, reading, sleep. On Saturday, I watched all of Lord of the Rings. These were the extended versions and went on forever, but I was glad of it. I didn’t want to think, didn’t want to remember.

I wanted to forget, to not have seen the news. Eventually, I’ll manage to put it behind me, like a lot of people. Watch. In a few days, the story will start to fade. Other news will take its place. And nothing–NOTHING–will change. Gun laws won’t be revised. People will stop talking about it. Life will resume it’s normal patterns.

Until the next time, and there will be a next time! and outrage will begin again… and then slowly fade.

What the hell is wrong with this country? I wasn’t born here but America has always been my home, the only one I’ve ever known. These last several years, I’m ashamed of it. Embarrassed by the bad choices it makes. And lately, I’m scared of what those in authority may do to me or those I love.

This is what happens when a country is run by Big Money and not people with big hearts, well developed ethics, and a strong sense of morality. What are we becoming?

Usually I write to escape reality, to go to a world that is much more sympathetic, more loving, more kind than the one we live in every day. Don’t get me wrong–I’m no saint. I suffer road rage, I get annoyed at people, sometimes small things piss me off. I occasionally have temper tantrums I’m not proud of.

Why is there so much crazy in our world these days? Why do we all seem to have such a short fuse of late? Is it because there are seven billion people on the planet and this number increases every minute of every day?

Mice who breed enough to fill their allotted space soon start killing each other. They kill themselves. Close proximity to others of their kind is not pleasant, it’s maddening. They try to escape it. Add to that dwindling resources and what do you get?

I apologize for the depressing post today, but life is sometimes depressing. I don’t always feel wonderful. Sometimes I’m downright sad.

18 Responses to Culture of Violence and Desperation

The majority of those children were the same age (within a month or so) as my youngest child; I can’t even begin to imagine the fear the kids felt or the fear the parents felt when they first heard followed by the horror and pain upon realizing their babies were gone. There’s a quote which says something like a person who loses a spouse is called a widow/widower; a person who loses their parents is called an orphan, but there is no word for a parent who loses a child because it’s a pain that can’t be described in one word. For the rest of us the story will fade; it has to in order for us to carry on – if we forever felt each tragedy as acutely as we do when it happens we’d all be blubbering messes incapable of functioning before long. The saddest part of that to me is knowing in the future, when it is remembered or remarked upon, it will be the killer’s name and face that comes to mind rather than the victims’ just like it is when we think of Columbine, VA Tech, Oklahoma City, and all the other tragedies.

I don’t really know why we’re getting more intolerant of our fellow man these days. Maybe it’s because there are too many of us; maybe we’re on contact overload because we’re now always reachable via cell phone, internet, whatever; maybe tv/movies/video games are inuring us to violence – making real people seem as insignificant as characters on a screen; maybe it’s a combination of things. I do know that I look around at the world sometimes and feel the need to apologize to my children for it.

I’d like it to finally hit winter here; there’s a stillness in winter that I find soothing, and I wish it would arrive.

A month away from everything and everyone sounds lovely, but I’d like mine in Wyoming, Montana, one of the Dakotas – somewhere with a sufficiently low population I can sit in the muted silence of snow and forget that noise even exists.

Unfortunately, anxiety has been my natural state for years; my current choices are gritting my teeth while trying to pretend I’m not splintering or medicating myself beyond feeling.

I think our way of life contributes to unnaturally high anxiety levels, depression, and an inability to roll with the punches. “Fight or flight” has been driven past normal response points. I think many of us have no idea how to respond anymore.

Thirty years ago, people fucked without condoms. They didn’t even think about it. They just did it, knowing nothing was around that would do more than slightly inconvenience them. If the woman was on the pill, they were good to go.

It wasn’t 30 years ago for me, but I remember that mentality. I also remember the shock on the day I discovered the pill wasn’t infallible (I’d like to present my oldest child as Exhibit A lol). I’m not sure it isn’t even worse today – teens are skipping condoms because they *want* to have babies. What kind of fucked-up world leads 11, 12, 13 year old children to seek out pregnancy and motherhood?

I don’t know. I don’t get it. But I’ve witnessed it firsthand. A friend’s daughter, at age 15, announced she wanted her mother to have a “little baby.” She said it in such a way I instantly realized she was the one that wanted the baby. Within months, she was pregnant. She had the kid and realized her life had changed forever. And her mother ended up spending more time raising the kid than the daughter who had her.

Stupid as shit sums it up nicely, and it also applies to “bug chasers” and “gift givers”. Somewhere along the way we have failed our children if they think early pregnancy/parenthood and HIV are desirous.

Okay, let me explain how I got there. 🙂 The sin eater took on all the sins so the people who caused them wouldn’t suffer. If we let ourselves feel all the pain in the world, we couldn’t survive; we need to assign that terrible weight to someone/something else. Religious people hand it off to a god. There isn’t anyone for atheists to hand off to, so we simply must take a step back, put distance between us and the tragedy, otherwise, we’d go insane.

It’s when things don’t change in reaction to this craziness that it bugs me so much. Things really have to change. We have to make them change.

Our country is a train rushing toward an abyss and there’s nothing to stop it from going over. The income inequality is dreadful and getting worse. The jobs being created pay minimum wage, which hasn’t gone up in ages and certainly isn’t enough to live on.

I think a lot of us feel helpless. What good does petitions do when politicians meet behind closed doors and agree to deals without our knowledge? While I think some of them sincerely want to do good, more just don’t care. “Lessee, do I want to sign a bill that will help put more money in people’s pockets… or do I accept this bribe over here that will assure my family’s position for decades?”